Android How To: Enable Google Maps Traffic in Any Country

Perhaps the most widely used feature of Google Maps is the ability to see traffic on the map. It’s great for showing you which streets or highways to avoid, especially if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere. However, it’s not available in every country, officially. But you can get it to show up in other countries that it’s not officially available in. A few examples of countries that don’t have Google Maps traffic, officially, are Turkey, Russia, and China. And two of those countries have Google services blocked, or at least some Google services.

The trick to enable it for countries that don’t officially have it, is actually pretty easy. So what you’re going to do is find an area on the maps that doesn’t have live traffic officially, then toggle on the “Traffic” in the slide out menu. Now go back to the original area. And you should now see the green, yellow and red lines depicting traffic in that area. Pretty neat, right? Now if you close the app, restart your phone, or whatever, the option stays turned on, and working in areas that don’t officially have the feature.

So how does this work? Well Google uses crowdsourced data to find live traffic. Remember, Google services are sort of blocked in Turkey (in addition to China) and it shows up in Turkey (although not China, yet). So it’s a great feature for those that live in Turkey, Slovenia and other countries that don’t already have live traffic in Google Maps. We’re unsure of how long this workaround has been around, but nice to have it.

It’s a pretty neat workaround here for Google Maps. And it could mean that live traffic is close to becoming available in these countries, that Google hasn’t officially made it available for. It’s a pretty nifty, albeit odd workaround. But the important thing here is that it works, and works well. So now users in these countries can rely on Google Maps live traffic for their drive to work, home, the airport or wherever they are going. A great feature from Google Maps.